Many restaurants that provide coffee and other beverages to customers also provide stand-alone serving stations where customers can add sweeteners and/or creamer to beverages. Individual serving, pre-packaged sweeteners and creamers are expensive and messy. They are also subject to loss or theft. Many restaurants thus prefer to offer their customers sweeteners and creamers from dispensers that are filled and re-filled from bulk quantities.
Providing sweeteners and creamers and other particulates to customers in bulk powder granule dispensers creates a number of problems. Prior art dispensers are expensive to manufacture because many of them require complicated machinery and/or complicated housings. Prior art dispensers are also somewhat complicated to use and they are not readily cleaned or maintained, which is essential for restaurant use. A powder/granule dispenser that is simple to manufacture, simple to operate, reliable and easy to clean and maintain would be an improvement over prior art particulate dispensers.